Snow and Roses

by Lettice Cooper

  “Could I?”

  “Why not? I shan’t be able to start until pretty late, which will give you plenty of time to come and meet me in town. It will mean arriving in Doncaster in the small hours.”

  “That doesn’t matter.”

  “I’ll book another room in the hotel there for you. When you see Nan you’ll be able to get her back as well as your car, won’t you?”

  “I’ll have a good try.”

  “I’ll ring off now and get my secretary to find a train from Oxford and ring you back.”

  “Don’t bother. I know the trains. There’s one at 5.40, and another, a fast one, at 7.5.”

  “Come by the late one, then, it will give you more time for preparations. Wait for me in the lounge of the Paddington Hotel and we’ll get something to eat there and drive straight up. I’ll be with you as soon as I can. That all right?”

  “Splendid. I didn’t know what to do. You are kind.”

  “It will be a pleasure. See you at Paddington.”

  A powerful light, sweeping over the car as it came to a standstill, roused Flora from a comfortable semi-consciousness.

  “Where are we now?”

  “North of Grantham. I’m just getting a fill-up. I’m sorry it woke you.”

  “I wasn’t really asleep.”

  “Are you warm enough? We can stop at one of the all-night places for coffee if you like.”

  “I’m very warm. I don’t want any coffee unless you do. What time is it?”

  “Just after midnight.”

  As he lowered the window to hand out money to the pump attendant a wave of sharply cold air flowed into the warmed car and stung Flora fully awake.

  “Walter, you must be tired after a long day’s work. Wouldn’t you like me to do some of the driving?”

  “I’d rather go on; you get into a steady rhythm on a long run. If I find myself dropping off I’ll ask you to take over.”

  “Yes, do.”

  She slid lower down in her seat. Walter’s hand pulled the rug up to her chin.

  “Thank you. What a shock Nan and Rick will get when they see me! I suppose Tom has no idea you are coming?”

  “I doubt if he will be much surprised. I sometimes think I must try his patience; it may really be I and not his mother, as I’ve always supposed, who gave him his longing for solitude.”

  “I shouldn’t think so. The most important thing for a child is to be truly loved, isn’t it? And Tom doesn’t seem to be after solitude at the moment. I do hope you soon find him.”

  “Oh, we shall find them both all right. That won’t be difficult. The local press will know where the students are, and your girl will be based on her own home, surely.”

  Flora settled herself comfortably in her seat and shut her eyes. It seemed entirely natural that Walter should take charge of her and her problems, that she should be driving north with him through the night to a part of England that she didn’t know. As if we were married; she found herself drowsily contemplating a possibility that had lain unformulated just below the surface of her mind. The fact that Walter was what her parents and sister considered part of the family had, anyhow for them, veiled the fact that he was not. They thought that he had been very kind to Flora during her troubles. She had in a way been content to let it rest at that. She felt and valued enormously his basic kindness, something that she had also loved and admired in Hugh. I don’t think I could ever really love anybody who didn’t have that.

  But of course she knew that it was not just kindness. Hugh, though he had been her only lover, had not been the only man who had wanted her. She and Hugh had come together with the swiftness of a collision. Walter moved towards her steadily and slowly. She thought that he hesitated to disturb her when she had not yet had time to get over her loss. And he was right, she was not ready to love again; on that level she wanted to be left alone. She was profoundly glad that Walter was there; she enjoyed his company, she was on his wave-length; when she saw him she felt better, he was solid ground under her feet.

  Is it fair to take what he gives me now, which is just what I want, without knowing if I shall ever be able to give anything else? I can’t help it, and he is not as vulnerable as Hugh was; he is an experienced man who can look after himself.

  Her drowsy reflections merged imperceptibly into dreams. She was coming out of the doorway of her cottage. It was summer because the hay was standing high in the long field as on the night of Hugh’s last visit. She pulled the door to and locked it, feeling an unutterable sadness because she was never coming back. She woke with a jerk as the car stopped again. Still shaken by her dream, she asked quickly,

  “What is it?”

  “Traffic lights. We’re on the outskirts of Doncaster. We’ll soon be there now.”

  “Did you have a good night, Flora? What there was of it?”

  “Yes, thanks. What about you?”

  “On and off. I always wake early. I’ve been out and got a Yorkshire Post and a Doncaster paper. There was another clash between pickets and police yesterday in front of the Pennythorpe power station. Two contractors’ lorries loaded with coal tried to get through but didn’t make it. Three policemen were hurt … one detained in hospital. Five miners arrested. The power station seems to be the centre of the storm, though of course they must be picketing the collieries too. They are still letting maintenance men go down, and allowing coal to be delivered to hospitals and to old people.”

  “They seem to have got the whole thing completely organized in a very short time.”

  “They have; determined people do. But they have taken the whole country, including the Government, by surprise. I think Heath made a mistake from his point of view to pick the miners to try conclusions with.”

  “I thought only peaceful picketing was allowed.”

  “It is by law. It was. But we’ve turned over a new page of history. The miners are not afraid to break the law and there aren’t enough police to stop them.”

  “Does it say anything about the students?”

  “There’s a picture of some of them camping under the wall of the power station.”

  He folded the paper with the picture uppermost and passed it to Flora.

  “You can’t see much, not enough to recognize anybody. Just jeans and hair.”

  The waiter brought Flora’s coffee and toast. It was still so early that there were only a few people in the hotel dining room, business men, each half hidden by his own newspaper. The room was chilly, the central heating switched off at night had not yet got back into the half momentum to which it was now reduced.

  “The first thing we’d better do is to find your girl. Do you know her home address?”

  “Yes. No. 17, Benton Hill, Garthwaite.”

  Walter scribbled it on the edge of the Yorkshire Post.

  “Then while you finish your breakfast and get ready, I’ll make inquiries about the way to Garthwaite. Put on everything you’ve brought with you. It’s cruelly cold. I shall be surprised if it doesn’t snow before evening.”

  When she joined him outside the front door, he was studying a map.

  “Garthwaite is about six miles away. We take the first turning to the left after the Town Hall, and bear southwest. You take the map, will you, and keep me right. The Pennythorpe power station is three miles further on after Garthwaite.”

  As they settled into the car, he added,

  “They were telling me in the office here that there are only three weeks’ supply of coal left at the power station. After that, for a good part of South Yorkshire the cold and the dark.”

  “Walter.”

  “Yes.”

  “Whose side are you on?”

  “The miners’. They are grossly underpaid and in the end this was the only way they could make it clear to everybody.”

  “By blackmailing the country?”

  “Do you think it is fair to call withdrawing voluntary labour blackmailing?”

  “Well it seems to me that’s what it
works out at. But I know I haven’t thought enough about these things. What I was really wondering was why, if you’re on the miners’ side, you want to prevent Tom from joining them?”

  “Because I don’t want him to get knocked on the head.”

  “He’s only doing what you did when you went off to fight in the Spanish war. You were younger than he is.”

  “I was tougher and I very soon learned to look after myself. Tom’s not built for knocking about. Are you keeping an eye on the map?”

  “There should be a left turn to Garthwaite in about half a mile.”

  They were driving through a flat countryside where, here and there, the head-gear of a colliery, or the long, dark mound of a colliery tip reared up against the low, yellow-grey sky. In between the colliery villages were ploughed fields or green fields dulled by winter; here and there an old farm house whose yellow-grey stone walls repeated the colour of the sky; occasionally a manor house of red brick standing back from the road; here and there a village, houses of worn red brick with slate roofs, strung out along the road, a church tower, a school.

  “Here’s the turn.”

  A signpost said Garthwaite. A few hundred yards brought them to a colliery at the foot of a low hill. Above the high brick wall jutted out head-stocks, chimneys and cooling tower, and the roof-tops of sheds and offices. Outside the gate a handful of the already famous pickets were standing about looking cold and bored. A village began at the colliery gates. Terraces of red-brick, slate-roofed houses were set at right angles to a street that climbed the hill, to where the square tower of a church cut out a block from the sky.

  “So this is Nan’s home. It looks a strange breeding ground for a poet.”

  “England seems able to generate them anywhere or used to.”

  No. 17 was the second house in one of the terraces half way up the hill. The doorstep was scoured as though nobody had ever stepped on it, the brass knocker shone. Spotless nylon lace curtains were drawn closely over the front window.

  “I’d better leave this to you, Flora. Let me know if you want me.”

  Walter unfolded his Yorkshire Post, and settled himself comfortably in the driving seat. Flora lifted the knocker and banged. She thought at first there was nobody in; then she heard the sound of a chain being unfastened from the door, which opened slowly. A short, stout, grey-haired woman stood in the doorway. A bright flowered apron covered a dark skirt and a much-darned cardigan. She was wiping floury hands on a cloth which she thrust into the deep pocket of her apron.

  “Mrs Coates?”

  “Aye, that’s right.”

  “I’m Flora James. I teach your daughter, Nan, at Oxford.”

  Mrs Coates peered at her in a puzzled way, but she said,

  “I’ve often heard Annie speak o’ you.”

  “Is she here?”

  “She’s not in t’ouse. She went out about half an hour sin! T’lad who brought her up here in his car has taken her over to Pennythorpe.”

  “It’s not his car, it’s mine. Mrs Coates, may I come in and talk to you for a few minutes? I’m worried about Annie.”

  Mrs Coates opened the door wider.

  “You’d best come through to the kitchen. It’s warmer there.” She looked over Flora’s shoulder. “Would the driver like to come in too?”

  “He’s all right, thank you, the car’s heated.”

  Mrs Coates led the way along a narrow passage from which a steep staircase ran upwards. She opened the door onto the most cheerful scene Flora had come across that morning. The kitchen was roomy, with a good coal fire burning in an old-fashioned iron grate, though there was an electric cooking stove standing against one wall. The window gave onto a yard where washing hung from a line. Across a narrow lane were the yards and backs of the next terrace. The electric light was on in the kitchen which was freshly painted with cream paint, and had a pleasant lingering smell of frying bacon. A mixing bowl covered with a cloth stood at one end of the polished steel fender. A rolling pin lay across the scrubbed table which was still scattered with flour.

  “You’ll excuse me being in a bit o’ a mess. I was doing some baking and I’ve just put the dough to rise. Sit down, Miss James and warm yourself. You’ll have a cup of tea, won’t you?”

  “Thank you, I should love one.”

  A big black-and-white cat, curled up on a chair in the shape of a cob loaf, slowly uncurled himself. He stretched, scratched the fur below his chin, and examined the intruder with eyes like green grapes. Springing down from the chair he stepped delicately towards her, sniffed cautiously at her boots and at the hand she reached down to welcome him. Evidently he felt her smell friendly; with an effortless spring he landed on her knee, pounded it for a few minutes with sharp claws, then curled round against her, tucked in his head, and resumed his nap.

  “Annie has run away from college without leave Mrs Coates, just when a new term is starting. You know this is her last full term for work. Her exam comes before the end of the next one. She is behindhand with her work; she didn’t do as much as we hoped in the summer holidays nor last term because of various things that upset her.”

  “She’s easily upset is our Annie, and when she is she tek’s good care that everyone else is upset too.” “She’s very temperamental.”

  Mrs Coates sniffed, and spooned tea into a stout brown teapot without answering. Now that she saw her in a bright light Flora noticed that she was not unmarked by her years of mental strain. When she was not speaking her mouth turned down at the corners; there was a deep pucker between her eyebrows, and her movements were jerky. She carried the teapot across to the kettle. When she had filled it she turned round.

  “What’s this about your car, then?”

  “I suppose Rick, Eric Stone, brought Annie here?”

  “That’s right. He slept on t’sofa in t’front room. We haven’t got another bed now, we gave it to our second son when he got wed. Annie tells me that Rick is t’editor o’ a newspaper?”

  “He runs a small magazine for a group of his friends.”

  “I thow’t it would be summat o’ that.”

  “Rick helped himself to my car out of the college car park without my knowing anything about it.”

  Mrs Coates, pouring a steady stream of dark brown tea into a big cup, looked over it at Flora.

  “Did Annie know that?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid she did.”

  “Mr Coates will play war with her when he finds out.”

  “Is he picketing?”

  “Nay. He’s down t’pit superintending the maintenance work. He’s t’Deputy, you see.”

  The pucker between her eyes deepened.

  “I don’t like it. I don’t like him being down there every day when t’pit’s not working. He’s always said that the number one safety device is working t’pit. When there’s no work going on you never know but what there’ll be a bit of subsidence, or a crack in t’ coal face and no one there to notice it. And I don’t like this trouble wi t’ pickets neither. There was men hurt yesterday; my eldest son was there in t’ middle o’ it. He says all they were doing was making a solid wall to keep t’ lorries out o’ the power station, but when men get angry it doesn’t stop at that. No, we’ve enough trouble here wi’out Annie laiking1 on top of it.”

  “I hope I shall be able to take her back with me.”

  Mrs Coates passed Flora the bowl of soft white sugar. She said pessimistically:

  “She’s a difficult girl is our Annie.”

  “Don’t I know it? But she’s exceedingly gifted, I think one day she may really be a very good poet.”

  “Oh aye? She was always setting in that corner by the fire scribbling. If I asked her then to do a bit of washing or cleaning for me she’d rush at it like a young horse, and do it anyway to get it done like. It’s less trouble to do it myself or wait until my youngest son, Ben, can do it for me. He’s far more use about t’house than Annie.”

  “I’ve heard so much about Ben, I know Annie is
very fond of him.”

  “She is that. If anybody can get a word of sense into her it’s Ben. From t’time we took her when she was three weeks old and Ben was a little lad o’ six he made that much o’ her she might ’a bin his child. She’d stop crying for him when she wouldn’t stop for anyone else. I can see her now when she was in a temper screaming till I didn’t know where to put myself, and Ben would take her in his arms and say ‘Hush up now, lovey,’ and she’d lay her head on his shoulder and be as quiet as a lamb.”

  “Is Ben picketing?”

  “No, he’s one of those that volunteered to drive t’ coal that’s allowed out to go t’hospital and to t’old people. It’s not his shift now, he’s out at t’back seeing to his pigeons. If you’d like a word wi’ him, I’ll call him.”

  “I should like to see him. I’ve heard so much about him.”

  Mrs Coates opened the back door and went out into the yard. Flora, sipping her hot, dark tea, looked round the room. She noticed a shelf of books above the dresser, one or two paperback volumes of poetry and novels, a few battered children’s books and school-books with splitting spines. Evidently this was the part of Nan’s library which had not been worth taking to Oxford. Flora remembered the rapture with which the girl in her first term had plunged into the riches of the college library, and was confirmed in her resolution that this talent, this genuine love of letters should not be wasted.

  “Here’s Ben. Miss James teaches our Annie at Oxford, Ben. Annie’s run off from college without leave seemingly, and Miss James has coom to get her back again.”

  “Annie shouldn’t ’a done that,” Ben said gravely.

  Flora, who had only seen the snapshot of him stooping to release the pigeon, had always had a picture of Ben in her mind as a sturdy, upstanding young miner, something like a masculine version of Nan. The real Ben was thin, shambled a little in his walk, and stooped in his carriage. A good deal of frizzy light hair surrounded a flat pale face.

  “I’m so glad to meet you at last, Ben. Annie has talked so much about you. She’s the most brilliant pupil I’ve ever had, and I’m very fond of her.”

  So much warmth and affection flowered in the young man’s face that Flora at once felt at home with him.